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Frictionless Ventures, a new incubator in the cloud computing sector

Ravi Gururaj, recently launched a new platform Frictionless Ventures, as reported by Economic times. The venture is launched with a view to invest seed money and nurture aspiring entrepreneurs with innovative and viable ideas. The first idea being incubated is a mobile contacts management app, SyncUsUp, which was a finalist in the New Venture Contest, held at Harvard Business school, Boston.

Ravi Gururaj will be leaving his position as Vice President at Citrix Systems, a leading cloud computing solutions provider to start this venture. Previously, he owns a startup VMLogix which was acquired by Citrix in 2010.

Talking about his new initiative, Ravi says it to be ‘for profit’ commercial venture and will serve as a launch platform from which he can freely innovate, idea, incubate, and invest in disruptive new technology ideas. The venture will initially be investing in range of INR 27 lakh – 1.3 crore in verticals such as cloud computing, mobility and big data.

According to the IAMAI, the attractiveness of cloud-based applications across sectors, from hospitality to healthcare, is driven by ease of use and lower cost. This has led to India becoming a hub for young cloud computing companies such as OrangeScape and Datagres.

Also, this sector has gain hype due to some of the biggest exits for the investors in this segment. In the past 18 months, Mumbai-based Netmagic sold a majority stake to Japan’s NTT Communications for Rs 900 crore while Citrix Systems paid over Rs 1,000 crore to acquire Cloud.com. Gluster, a cloud computing startup, was bought by Red Hat for about Rs 667 crore.